I didn’t post to the blog yesterday. Tuesday was just another day. Nothing too exciting to report. Yesterday, on the other hand, was full of activity.

While I was reading through the blogs I follow, I saw that our friends at Technomadia announced the roll-out of a new social media site for RVers. It’s called RVillage.

“It’s not only about the places we go, it’s also about the people we meet along the way”

Once you join RVillage, you enter your location. Other members of the site can see where you are and view your profile. You can see if other members are nearby. This will facilitate meet-ups with fellow RVers who share common interests. This morning, I saw that 1,109 people have already signed up. There are groups you can join on the site to follow forums on topics that are of interest.

I think it’s a great concept. If we had this a few weeks ago, we probably would have had the chance to meet Tim and Amanda Watson. They’re fellow full-timers and blog at WatsonsWander. As it was, I found out too late that we were at Usery Pass Regional Park at the same time. We didn’t get together.

Later, around noon, Mark and Emily Fagan stopped by (their blog is Roadslesstraveled). We sat and chatted together. We don’t know when we’ll get together again. They’re heading down to Tucson. By the time they come back to this area, we’ll probably be on our way north.

I had to cut our visit short. My friend, Mike Hall, works at ATK in Mesa, near Falcon Field. ATK is Alliant Techsystems Incorporated. ATK has many divisions. They are involved in military defense systems, aerospace, sporting arms and ammunition among other things.

The facility in Mesa builds Bushmaster medium caliber cannons, such as the M230 chain gun used on the AH64 Apache helicopter. This cannon fires linkless 30mm ammunition at a cyclic rate of 625 rounds per minute. It’s accurate out to 4,000 meters – that’s more than two miles! In operation Desert Storm and in Afghanistan, it demonstrated armor piercing capability at ranges of up to 2,000 meters.

Bushmaster M230 chain gun

Mike had arranged for me to meet him at 1pm to tour the facility. I was given a security pass and clearance to enter. I saw how they take four-inch diameter billits of steel, about 100 inches long and turn them in gun barrels. This is a very long process. It takes many machining steps, polishing and hardening processes, straightening and stress relieving and so on before they have a finished, accurate barrel.

The way they cut the rifling inside the barrel is fascinating. They have a mandrel that fits tightly inside the barrel. The mandrel has the rifling pattern cut into it. They pump a salt water solution charged with electricity through the cuts in the mandrel. This process is precisely controlled and erodes the rifling grooves in the barrel. I had the opportunity to inspect the finished rifling with a high-magnification boroscope.

A real treat came next. We watched as a newly finished M230 30mm chain gun was test fired. It was bolted to a test stand and carefully hand cycled with dummy rounds to ensure everything functioned correctly. The test stand was in a concrete walled room about 20′ x 20′. The room had a large, heavy steel door. The gun was pointed down range through a tunnel. The cardboard target was down the tunnel, followed by a large sand trap for the projectile.

We exited the room as the final preparations to fire were made. The operator checked everything over, looked around the room and called out, “Clear!” Then he walked out of the room and closed the heavy steel door. I was off to his side, looking at the gun through a thick plexiglass window. The operator pressed the fire control button. Brrrrp. Twenty rounds were fired in about 2 seconds. The shock waves created by the 30mm rounds blasting out of the barrel through the muzzle brake could be felt in my chest even though I was standing outside of the concrete chamber where the gun was mounted.

The operator opened the door, checked the room and again called out, “Clear!” Then we were allowed to enter the room. I picked up one of the spent, lightweight casings. He told me I could keep it if I wanted it. I brought it home to take a picture of it to give some sense of scale of this ammo.  I wasn’t allowed to take any photos inside the facility. I also brought a heavier casing from an M242 Bushmaster 25mm cannon. The 30mm casing is a special lightweight material to reduce the weight of ammo payload on the Apache helicopter.

Spent 30mm casing from an ATK M230 chain gun

ATK M242 25mm casing

It was an interesting tour. The people working in the plant were all very pleasant and willing to take time to explain things to me. I’m grateful for the opportunity and the effort Mike made to allow this to happen.

Afterwards, I met Mike and John Huff for a beer at Lucky Lou’s. I couldn’t stay long though, because we had more visitors on the schedule. At 5pm, Lana and Joel came over from our old neighborhood. We drove in their Toyota Highlander to Tia Rosa’s, our favorite Mexican restaurant, a few miles from here.

We planned an early dinner to avoid a long wait for a table. When we pulled into the parking lot, I was amazed to see only a handful of cars there. As we were walking across the parking lot, I saw why. There was a sign in front of the restaurant that said “Closed due to fire.” The cars in the lot were from people going to the smaller taqueria across the lot from the restaurant.

We changed our plan and drove over to Red, White and Brew and enjoyed a great meal there. After dinner we stopped at Gus’ and sat on the patio for an after-dinner drink. It was a great finish to a fine day.

Today, Donna is preparing for her trip to Chicago tomorrow. She’s attending the International Home & Housewares Association show there, where she’ll be the cleaning expert in Reliable Corporation’s booth. Reliable makes, among other things, a great steam mop that we use to clean our hardwood floors. For the show, she created a 1-Minute Spring Cleaner Notebook on Springpad (an app she uses to organize her recipes, book ideas and other things). Her Spring Cleaner Notebooks includes 10 quick and easy spring cleaning tips plus her top 10 favorite cleaning tools, including the Reliable Steam Mop.